OCTOBER 16, 1961

NEW YORK—I have been receiving an increasing number of letters from groups who want to have
peace demonstrations of one kind or another.

The latest one came from a young girl in San Francisco who attended a meeting at Hyde
Park last summer. At that time she asked me about peace and how young people could
keep from "being afraid." I gave her a general answer, saying that we must first develop
the capacity to live peacefully with ourselves, and then to feel at peace with our
surroundings, our family and our friends. Once this is achieved, we may then be able
to be of use in trying to bring about a peaceful atmosphere between the countries
of the world. She now writes me that students in the San Francisco and Bay area held
a demonstration on October 14 to promote peace, but she would like to feel that they
could make some constructive suggestions of how active citizens could work for peace
and the avenues through which they could do so.

The answer, I think, is that our obligation as citizens is to find out from our own
government what are the helpful things we can do to assist in making the peoples of
the world realize that we as a nation want peace, that we believe in a peaceful world
and are willing to make sacrifices to obtain it. Our great difficulty is that the
maintenance of peace seems to lie in the hands of two nations, the Soviet Union and
ourselves. The Russian leader, Premier Khrushchev, by his many provocative speeches
has made it appear that it is our attitude which is the aggressive one. But when you
study his own proposals you find that while he says he wants peace, he wants it only
on his own terms. Unless we agree to what he wants—to the kind of treaty or the kind
of action on any subject which he wishes to interpret in his own way—then there can
be no agreement between us and he threatens us with annihilation.

Thus, we have had months and months of negotiations on the question of stopping nuclear
tests. In the end, Khrushchev has started nuclear tests in the atmosphere without
regard to what anyone in the world might feel or think about it. He believes that
we were as unreasonable in our demands as we think he was; and neither of us feels
that they can endanger the safety of their people by giving up in any way. As a result,
we in the U.S. find ourselves engaged in rearmament—after having disarmed at the end of World War
II. We look upon every move in space made by the Soviet Union as a danger, and not
as something that might be used by cooperative effort in the U.N. for the benefit of all nations.

Now we find ourselves faced with the dilemma of making Khrushchev understand that
beyond a certain point we cannot yield in any area of the world. We are not interested
in appeasing or giving in to him. But we are very much interested in negotiating with
him, for there are broad areas in which, if he is willing to give a little, we could
also give. Instead of this, we find ourselves obliged to prepare for defense because
we believe he might use an atomic weapon against us. We think he is bluffing and that
he will give in, but we cannot be sure.

The President naturally feels he cannot risk the lives of the people without taking
every known precaution to save as many as possible in case of attack. This is what
leads to a civilian defense program and the request for building shelters. One's private
opinion may be opposed to such measures, but it is understandable that the President
should feel he must prepare for all eventualities. As I have previously said, I think
it should be a thoroughgoing plan made and supervised by the Pentagon. I think we
have the right to ask for this type of shelter program if the President feels the
need of proving that we are willing to do whatever our government asks.

Any demonstration for peace should clearly be an effort to show the world our desire
to support peace, but should not indicate any weakening in the support of our President
in whatever he may think necessary to ask us to do under the present circumstances.
If he does not receive this support, and if Premier Khrushchev is not aware of such
support, it might weaken the President's hand for negotiation. We are, one might say,
in something of a gigantic poker game for the highest stakes that nations have ever
played.